Nixon & Haldeman on Press relations and Television coverage

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What time are we leaving tomorrow?

10.

Yes.

My father.

The evening is, the night is, you know, the afternoon.

about a minute and a half of you answering the wage price control phase two question.

That was all.

And so you were standing there saying it.

So that didn't add anything to a reporter saying .

Well, they did.

Of course, they covered other things, but that's all we got out of having a television camera there.

Did you talk to Ryan about it?

Yeah, I talked to him last night.

He sees it, what?

Or did you?

I don't know.

No, not completely, but somewhat.

And then he makes the point that that's...

Better than no footage at all.

No.

He said, well, there's another argument to it.

Now, they, for instance, I'll tell you what I agree with.

He says he was concerned because they had demonstrators.

He says, if I didn't have me on it with the demonstrators, they wouldn't come on anyway.

Well, there's the answer to that.

On the Today show this morning, the lead...

was your comments on the waste price control but they didn't use film they used still shots of you which they would have could have gotten any still shot so what then they ran 40 seconds of no demonstrators outside and uh i talked about that and then at the end of the news segment they had a taped clip of 45 seconds of your comments on the need for balance and fighting pollution and keeping jobs so so we did get one

at the end of this thing.

On CBS this morning, they had a minute and 45 footage of you answering a question on a court nomination.

So they are picking up little bits and pieces, but nothing, you know, it doesn't work.

Your other, what you got, you would have gotten without the camera, really is the point.

Totally.

It'd be different, Bob, it'd be different if I weren't on television a lot.

But I wouldn't have my face out there every time I see something.

Well, no, the picture, what was on was extremely good.

You were good, you were, you know, handling those things in good form and all that.

Like the local telecast in Detroit was a damn good telecast.

And so you could argue maybe it's worth something there, but no.

We don't give a damn about Detroit.

If it were Chicago, I think it's worth it.

With, you know, the statewide Illinois thing, let's swap over into Wisconsin and Indiana and things like that.

Or Ohio.

Ohio.

And statewide, that's worthwhile.

You get them in key states.

But in Michigan, you don't care.

Sure.

And to do that much work just to get a, what Jeff's telling me, to get an hour on Michigan television with Michigan folks is...

It's worth the effort, you know what I'm saying?

Well, it's all right if you're honest, I'll push this.

Why?

Because they... Well, he has, they push the hell out of him, too.

He stands up very well.

Well, this one, he wasn't being pushed on them.

This one, he had said it the other way.

He was arguing on an honest belief on this one.

That we came out better by doing it than not.

And all other things being, well, he's probably right.

But the question is, how much better did we come out and how much difference did it make in order to come out?

What price did we pay to come out that much better?

You mean the work?

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Although you had to work hard.

The problem, the first thing that was wrong was doing that thing at all.

Yeah.

Because it was, given the fact that you had to do it at all, that you were going to do it at all, you had to do almost all work anyway.

Sure.

And there was no way to get that down.

And the best thing is you could refuse British answers because there wasn't that kind of face to question.

Jesus Christ.

I was afraid there were questions without British guys.

Yeah, they were asking.

But that's where your hard preparation work is, is in getting those good, tight answers.

But you had to give fairly extended answers, partly to turn the question around.

I can get to my point.

Yeah.

And partly because there was a taste of that thing was such that you would have instilled in them if you had done risk answers.

They were here to do it all.

Oh, no, no.

They were there for the purpose of having me educated.

You didn't have, as you do at first, quite a few times, you got anything to get your hands on.

Now, where you said, maybe you could educate us or something on this or that, you know, one guy said, and the other said, well, I would like to, I would like a three-part question, and they were really sure that they'd all... Well, they were trying to be polite, which is a...

I thought it would be good, but it isn't good.

I thought it would be good to have a positive attitude to the question.

Actually, the good, I thought the only good question was the letter guy, and he interrupted, which was good, and told you he thought it was wrong in the fact that, and asked a semi-antagonistic questioner that had little meaning in the least.

I mean, it was brought quite up.

It's very interesting.

Well, it didn't do any harm to him.

It did not hurt him.

We betrayed him.

We turned down our own praise.

Good.

Now let's get us a press conference.

We would have gotten better with this.

Of course, part of the problem there is you do it at 8 o'clock at night, 9 o'clock at night.

Yeah, that'd be true.

You often have too much A&M papers.

You can't do it.

You often do it in the TV news.

That's right.

Fresh offers, of course, at night.

You don't worry about A&M.

Because you're on television.

But this wasn't on television, so you didn't have that.

There's no point doing anything at night that matters.

Unless it's telehealth.

I'm sure there's a preference for that.

You might as well just, after four in the afternoon, you might as well just close down the shop, go play, go bowling.

Haven't we learned that though?

My God, you know, that is the way we used to work.

It's a goddamn problem.

Silly.

Not worth it.

And that was, the big event was the night rally.

You know, remember?

I'd go rest there.

I'd rest there.

Take two hours off to prepare to get to bed.

I'd try to get my horse steamed up after banging around all day.

After the day did the most important thing, but at least on Wednesday at noon.

Or leaving the hotel in the morning.

You know, catch a few people in the chowder or something.

Yes, no question about that.

We probably treaded too lightly on keeping it wide open.

There were no restrictions on the question.

We did tell them that.

But we may have said too much.

I mean, we maybe should have gone back and said, of course, there are no restrictions on the questions.

But you'll want to maintain a certain balance between foreign and domestic.

You don't want to overload economic areas for everybody to have.

Well, they didn't ask any questions on Vietnam.

None of them solved them.

None on the conservative revolt.

I mean, where we've gotten both of these reasons.

Well, the conservative revolt is just something that is .

is there, except for about 300 people.

Also, I'm very excited about it.

But you notice that all those functions will be important.

Not only elections in Vietnam, none of them.

You, Jesus Christ.

Well, the only China question was, are there going to be no people?

Yeah, that's right.

And the fact was so obvious.

What do you expect?

I've already discussed it.

I've already answered.

Well, the first one, I haven't had anything changed.

I think they know how to answer the questions out there.

And that sort of thing.

We have not, we think they've known.

But with the demonstrators, I would say, let me say a couple things that I think you treat on, and certainly the future that I, occurred to me.

I think that we need, in addition to the operation that we have with Goode, who responded on the tactical arrangements, you need to take them more,

who is sort of what I call a director.

Let me put it this way.

You know, I personally didn't realize until I was there that I was going to walk out and start asking questions.

I would have had it if I had not known that they were going to have a man on.

on the, on the president of the club interviews me saying how everybody in the club has submitted questions to a panel, and the panelists will answer the questions.

I told them that, see.

I didn't realize it until right at the last, I mean, it was too late to say that they were going to, to tell me, you already know who the, what the hell was going to be.

No, I wouldn't.

Do you know what I mean?

That, that shouldn't, that was not good production.

The second, I mean, it could have been, you can also get,

We are, our main point is to build up the television audience, the television radio audience a little bit in the back, just to, you know, you have to tell them what it's all about.

So they have me, I'd walk out there, and here's the president of the United States, and the Detroit economic bloc.

So there's the idiot sitting there.

And what the Carson's all about.

See?

Even more important, especially last night, was radio.

Because we made it so it was playing on live national radio.

The TV guy that was watching in Michigan.

So you could at least see that you would have come out and there was a panel sitting there.

The radio guy, come to think of it, probably didn't have the foggiest notion of what was happening.

Unless maybe they did have it on the next segment.

The other thing is that when it comes to the, like for example,

The, uh, you get out, I mean, you know, you use that demonstrator for outside, I mean, I did some, I did some, but I felt like the more, let's say, you know, there's something out here, you know, good things might mention, you know, or something like that.

You're sure to not believe there's something, but, uh, you know, you do.

Uh,

and also when you have a situation like a cut-off thing

You need, not a good, but you need more so that they cut it off when there's, you know, they deal with the double question.

You don't cut up.

You let it go when you see what I mean.

See how it's going.

And now you don't have more.

You don't have anything.

You can do it, for example, if you don't have a lawnmower.

Somebody like that.

But somebody has to be involved in there or has to control this thing.

Other than, I mean, you can't delegate that far down on this sort of thing.

See, in my opinion, I don't think you can.

Or we don't know what the format is.

We've got to control it better.

It's the old, it's the same thing about not having a warm-up for the VFW thing, you know.

It was beautifully advanced, but it didn't have a warm-up.

And there's where you've got to have your people then.

I think it would be good just for everybody to talk to Pat about it.

I think in the future, or the next time around, that he should have a little limitation on all answers to 100 words.

See, that's basically a little more than I can hardly give anyone, because that's almost a minute.

Then we put a lot like we do with the little something over here.

saying I'm certainly a one-liner, but he put a little background on it later.

Now that will mean, for example, when they get a question like the way the press reads, he will do, or whoever he talks to, you know, the bureaucracy will be forced to do, like it would be ridiculous if I didn't do it because so many of them remember me, for them to submit a thousand-word statement to me on the International Monetary Fund.

Now, the way that should have been presented is that it's just like one, two, three orders.

The thing I said on profit, I worked that out in my mind.

What are profits?

I mean, first, that first, they are in control.

Second, who gets it?

Now, that's, you can see the money working.

One, two, three, four, 100 million Americans get it.

The government gets one dollar every two.

And, finally, the people who get jobs get it, because it makes more money.

And I think that if you could work that out, I think there's sort of a

And also, to work out and answer certain questions, to guess where he thinks, one-line responses.

Now, I can think of those sometimes, you know what I mean?

And I can't always use them.

Just like a one-line response to a question, see?

Now, he's so smart that he will be able to adjust to this kind of thing.

Because he does a brilliant job.

I mean, my God.

The stuff he takes is boiling.

Here you see the Kissinger stuff in every package.

Well, the Big Hunter stuff is totally impossible.

I hear you're right.

You know, the Warhols weren't doing anything else.

That's a word that came from Connie and his group.

I don't remember.

I don't remember that.

And Schultz.

Yeah, and Schultz and Kissinger.

Right.

I probably never...

On that, even though you wanted it directly from them, we should have, that should have gone the path for boiling first.

So that you could have that there to back up to read the whole thing, but he should have had it boiled then to the... Yeah, yeah.

Another thing I think would be very good if you would talk about it is that they could go back over the

These speeches, for example, let me point out one thing now.

And I know it's very, I use one thing that I have used, and it is better to go to one, I mean, I don't know, it's just, it's more comfortable to go on welfare than to go to work.

Now, here's, you've really got to read the act, or don't believe in Christ and the others, but you hand them back, say, not that.

What really makes politics

what makes repetition, repetition, repetition.

Don't worry about it.

They are concerned because when I repeat, they'll have John Osborne or somebody who'll say I repeat it, and they worry about it.

But the Bible reminded us that as Kennedy made that thing, don't ask what your country will do for you, what you'll do for your country.

At least a hundred times.

At least.

Everybody knows.

He said it again in his inauguration.

It was picked up.

And our people did not leave that.

Like, for example, how many times have people told you there were a lot of good lines in speech to the Congress?

And yet, this whole vote that he was prepared, not one of those lines was repeated as a, you know, it's the exact same thing.

Now, I don't mean that, see, he must have said, I'll remember, or he could remind us, you know, how good lines he used, you know.

Like, for example, there's, like at the paper, the game job is better than welfare.

Now, we've been adopting all those things you said out there, but, see, and the new prosperity without borders, but the, but, and again, people try to work with you and those things.

I think the reason is, the reason they don't fill it is that they really aren't too certain about the columns, don't you think?

So they're going to say we're out of repeat.

Yeah, and they probably feel that from their own viewpoint it's, you know, you're looking, they should be giving you new material, you know, any clock can sit down and repeat, which isn't true at all.

The struggle is figuring out what to remove and where to put it.

The material.

Just use it.

Just use the goddamn old material.

Until it gets through.

They don't get it the first time.

That's for sure.

They aren't listening the first time.

They don't remember the first time.

Anyway.

Clear.

Second.

Yes.

No, you were certainly right, though.

Anything you do after 9 o'clock, unless it's on 8 o'clock after the live television, forget it.

Don't be exposed to the television media.

Screw it.

Why bother with it?

You can be a little bit more relaxed.

The questioner says, then I can be more relaxed, too, if they're not on television, you know?

How much more?

That's another difference.

Those guys up there on television, big deal for them.

We think of Detroit already as being out in Christ, but he convinced them that, oh, God, to that guy, he's not.

Everybody in the local scene, everybody at the office.

What's the exposure that any of those people will get in the lifetime of their life?

Well, all in all, having said this, and we say that maybe we should, it probably was as good a way as it was in Detroit as we can think of.

Who knows?

Well, I think it probably was, but the question is whether it worked out.

Yeah, that's the point.

Yeah.

And whether instead we should have forgotten Detroit and gone someplace else and just dropped in and looked in the shoes.

Yeah.

Some places were changing.

I mean, the demonstration didn't turn out to be too much of a wank, did it?

No, and Uster did a good job on that.

He worked pretty closely with the Teamsters, the auto workers, and AFL.

And the AFL tried to get the National Center man out to try and cool it with their people.

And they, it was a combination demonstration.

They had had an anti-police demonstration in Negroes, I don't know, earlier in the day.

And that was with blacks.

They picked up the people from that, and then about half of this group was just hippie and other war types.

I saw that.

Where were they from?

University.

Well, that's a combination.

And then they bothered people at all coming in?

I guess not much.

It was basically fairly ordinary people.

No problem for us when we drove in.

People obviously had seen it coming in, because that's how they laughed when I said the science.

You know, you were talking about the big hillboards.

I knew they were laughing at that.

They were laughing about the science.

It's a good double pick.

I don't know that on all these meetings there is a he or somebody who is a

What is this audience like?

I mean, uh, the, uh, you see what I mean?

and also to sort of, sort of, and also to plan and program.

I think you could have done a pretty good job on that, I think.

You know, sort of warming it up, that junction and so on.

Yeah, they tracked you a little for that.

Music, rock music, you know, beforehand.

But it was well in that hall.

And you almost start with an impossibility.

And that kind of thing.

Especially with the way they did do a good job of warming up your health producers.

But they did that with bands down the aisle and all kinds of stuff.

They really put a sort of carnival atmosphere into it.

Well, this is a little different.

This is Keanu.

This is the Bay group and so forth.

Well, the economic club, you know, Walker's sister would die if you decide to have that type stood on the odds or something.

Right.

Just for curiosity's sake, why don't you see what they thought was on there?

Any weird?

I mean, it was a bad deal for them.

Oh, I think the plan of those people out there is very much to make such a big deal just to go.

No present therapy question for the gut that I cannot recall before.

And we're right.

We should always look for the maximum out of everything, Bob.

There's just so many hours in the day.

There's so much energy.

There's so much concentration.

That's why we look that way.

I have the same question.

You got a lot out of that.

which is the fact you're doing it, which is, in any way, a loss.

And even national, a press record, people can say that, and I know some of them said it, the press record collector, nobody can say that there's got to be a question of reason.

I mean, they were asking, Jesus Christ, I'll bet you that if you put the press, if you put it on that press record, three-fourths of them don't know what the hell this is.

Now, believe me, they wouldn't know.

But it's light as night even.

Even though it's been kicking around here for two years,

You can see my point though about not wanting to get bogged down

Oh, boy, that would be, I could tell from that, Jesus Christ.

I mean, what about future sovereigns?

What about that?

Is this going to be right with that?

Do you think this is going to do that?

Is this fair?

Is that fair?

Before you get through, you're dead.

Absolutely dead.

I've got to stay above that, Bob.

Do you agree or not?

I do.

This is specific, yeah.

And the specifics of it are not going to be a positive.

It's not positive.

But that's how it is.

And here's Secretary Dutton to tell you what it is.

Yes, yeah, he sure did.

He bought it the other day.

He said that it's a very awkward situation.

You know, I knew I should be there, but I didn't know what to do about it.

So I just heard him say call me or something like that.

So we do that every once in a while.

We get this department list, and we try to, you know, make the additions that we need to do.

Thank you.

Nixon & Haldeman on Press relations and Television coverage

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 24, 1971

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